‘Sound of Music’ will be have you singing along

Kewanee’s “Summer of Sound” is off to a great start with two weeks of Concerts in the Park and tonight’s 6:30 performance in Veterans Park by the Air National Guard Band of the Midwest.

Dave Clarke

Kewanee’s “Summer of Sound” is off to a great start with two weeks of Concerts in the Park and tonight’s 6:30 performance in Veterans Park by the Air National Guard Band of the Midwest.It’s fitting that the next musical treat is “The Sound of Music,” to be presented at 7 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday in air-conditioned Petersen Auditorium, this year’s offering by the Kewanee High School summer theater program. Tickets are $10 for adults who are not veterans, and $5 for veterans, their families, and students. Proceeds will go to support the good work of the Kewanee Schools Foundation. You could hardly do better than “The Sound of Music,” one of the most popular and enduring American musicals of all time. Opening on Broadway in 1959 with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, it was made into a movie in 1965. The Sound of Music was the final musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein; Hammerstein died of cancer nine months after the Broadway premiere. Many songs have become standards, such as “Edelweiss”, “My Favorite Things”, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”, “Do-Re-Mi,” and, of course, “Sound of Music.” Since it’s summer, community members and alumni join KHS students for an all-star cast in the local production. Karleigh Moon, a 2012 KHS graduate now majoring in choral music at Western Illinois University, plays Maria, while Zach Murphy, a KHS senior who played Charlie Bucket’s granddad in the KHS winter musical, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” will play Captain von Trapp. Heather Olalde and 2013 KHS graduates Johnny Williams and Ellen Johnson share directing duties. Tony Allen is charge of set design, Sue Blake is art director, and Anna Sheahan is music director for the summer stage treat. “I’m usually hard to please, but this (musical) will blow you away,” said Olalde who promised those who have enjoyed KHS musicals in the past will definitely not be disappointed.Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer had the memorable movie roles for “Sound of Music,” while Mary Martin and Theodore Bikel were the leads on Broadway. This holiday season NBC is planning a television version of the classic casting Carrie Underwood as Maria. The musical is based on the real-life story of Maria Kutschera who was born in Austria in 1905. Both parents died when she was very young. Raised by a court-appointed guardian, she entered a convent in Salzburg at age 18. She was teaching fifth graders at the convent when she was sent by the Mother Abbess as a governess to the seven children of Baron Georg von Trapp, a decorated World War I submarine commander, who had retired after the death of his wife. Maria and von Trapp married but economic disorder in the 1930s lead to the loss of his fortune and the family sang to make ends meet. When the Nazis took over Austria, the family fled across the Alps to Italy, and on to America where they performed as the Trapp Family Singers.They settled in the Green Mountains of Vermont, which seemed like their homeland, where the singing group disbanded in 1955. Maria ran a resort with her children and grandchildren until her death in 1987 at age 82.A book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp was the inspiration for the musical.Doors at Kewanee High School will open half an hour before each performance.Tickets are available at Peoples National Bank, Union Federal Savings & Loan, both Kewanee locations of Community State Bank, Kewanee Banking Center of the State Bank of Toulon, at the Kewanee Schools Foundation office at KHS, and at the door.